Comment Archives: Locations: Restaurants: Middle Eastern

I'm an army brat and I spent 4 years in Iran so for me this place is comfort food. I haven't found a place in Tucson that does Iranian food well. There is nothing quite like their spices like sumak or saffron infused rice and the various kabob dishes. I was taking a trip down memory lane here. The owner was very friendly with us and the waitress was on top of everything. I don't get the negative reviews above. I found the meal great and the portions were huge.

I haven't been disappointed here. The lemon potatoes are amazing, the gyro is succulent and full of flavor, the falafal is one of the best in town. The service has been mostly good, The service is good and swift. This is one of my favorites.

WOW! The other reviewer must have had a bad day...I went here with my family same exact day as the other reviewer's post. We must have been in different restaurant's. Our meals were outstanding and just the right portions. Service was great too, with our waitress continually asking us if we needed anything and promptly refilling drinks. I had the chicken schwarma with salad and motabal. Schwarma's are meant to be eaten with pita...they are not just plates of meat, hence the reason why they are not big chunks of meat. The chicken had some kind of paprika onions and a sauce that tasted like tahini - really good. The motabal was a roasted eggplant dip that had a really good depth of flavor. The rice, by the way, is not intended to be a "saffron rice" as the other reviewer posted. It was a buttery rice that was probably cooked in chicken broth. It was neither tasteless or dry. If you favor gigantic portions of fat laden food you should stick to McDonald's. If you want very flavorful food with great service, go here. This was a great place and a great experience.

We had food delivered to our office for a luncheon and were very pleased. We ordered a combo chicken and beef schwarma, greek salad, humuus, tabbouleh, baklava, pita bread, sauces, etc. The food was hot, well seasoned, plentiful, good value and on time. Even folks who weren't sure they liked Lebanese food thought it was delicious. We are ordering again this week.

I love the salads, they are fresh and full of crisp veggies with garbanzo beans and a delicious dressing. Another favorite is the persian chicken kebob- Jojeh sandwich I find the sauce and onions in this wrap, I have not been able to try much more because these are my favorites.

As of at least August '10, the restaurant has changed names from "El Saage" to "Falafel King", although the menus and restaurant reviews still have the old name everywhere. The food was good, the falafel was crisp and flavorful, and the baba ghanoush was rich and smoky: perhaps the best way I've ever eaten eggplant. The restaurant felt clean to me, but perhaps I have different standards from the previous reviewer.

Great Persian food, especially since I didn't expect to see one in Tucson! I plan to go there next time I'm in Tucson. Persian food, in my opinion, is better than Greek or Indian (although I do love Indian food). Not spicy but very flavorful is prepared properly.

I've been here twice and I wasn't impressed either time. It seems like a horrible value. I ended up paying $17 (tip and tax included) for some grilled veggies, lettuce, pita bread, and hummus. The water tastes really funky. Their sign says vegetarian paradise, but I didn't find that many vegetarian items on the menu. I'm not going back.

Oh man! Live and learn. One of the worst Middle Eastern / Greek, whatever you wanna call it restaurants this side of the Mississippi. We are sorry to sound so harsh but it was plain awful. On a positive note there are a couple of decent places for this style of cuisine in the area but we won't name names and play favorites here.

In Alibaba, you'll be charged ($39.99) for a combo (Beef, lamb and ground beef) but they intentionally give you beef steak, double ground beef and no lamb, while they charge you for the price of the lamb in their combo meal. The food is covered professionally and you think you'll have no reason to open the cover and check the food.
When you let them know about it, they admit that was what they gave you and they've charged you for the lamb combo without telling you!!!

They say they do that sometimes to their customers and they don't refund the customer!!!!

Slow service, took a half hour to get our food. Coupons are worthless, you spend way more money using their coupons than if you did not. This restaurant forgot almost half of our order. We had to remind them that some of our food was missing.............and when it finally arrived we were done eating. Worst restaurant ever!

Finally got around to trying this place. Picked up the Lamb Shwarma with Rice for $13 and the Baklava for $3....

Firstly, they were 20 MINUTES LATE WITH MY ORDER so, needless to say that, by the time the bag finally actually showed up, I didn't really bother to check the contents, just blindly trusted that there was enough actual food in the containers to feed a person.

When I got home however, I opened it up to discover- I kid you not (I seriously had to get out my measuring cups to check) 1/4 cup of both a salad and some of the MOST TASTELESS AND DRIEST "Saffron" rice imaginable, and, in comparison to that skimpy portioning a "generous" 1/3 of a cup of tiny dribbles of meat with- and I had to count this part too, 4 of the tiniest "slices" of onion I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE outside of a McDonald's burger!!!!

Seriously, I had to get a spoon because the meat dribbles weren't even big enough to scoop up with a fork- much less spear! And, of course, it was pretty much fat and grizzle (how in the seven hells they managed to make actual FAT dry too- I honestly don't even want to know- I mean, I'm the first to admit that a chef's only as good as the quality of their ingredients- and that was obviously the majority of the problem but COME ON!!!!!)

Now, I'll grant, the baklava was good.... all three bites of it....

But, needless to say that given that I was starving at the time, I still managed to choke it down and, obviously, even after polishing everything off, I had to get up and make an ACTUAL dinner for myself.

Sooooo not going back because, I can only surmise that, they've somehow spied out the critics and gave them VIP treatment of some kind here- because these portions at these prices with this piss-poor service and bad quality of ingredients SERIOUSLY SUCKS!